Making everyone happy is impossible. Pissing them off is a piece of cake. I like cake.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Immigrant? Want to work? Here's an easy guide...

Are you a non-EU immigrant? Would you like to live and work in this country? Excellent: let me take you through the process.

It's only fair to let you know what you're in for, so here's a few caveats:

If you get a job, you have to pay the full lot of tax—but you cannot claim any benefits.

If you are American and you pay less tax here than you would in the US, then you have to make up the difference. The Federal government will come and find you if you do not.

You will need to carry a biometric ID with you at all times. Yes, I know that you do not have to in theory, but it is wise to do so. As a reminder, this card is not for claiming benefits, because you aren't allowed any.

Do get used to being treated as a second class citizen. This is only natural and just, because you are taking our jobs. You are also taking our beenfits, even though you aren't allowed to claim any. Do you see?

Now, getting a job in this country is easy. Of course. Here's how it goes:

You manage to get into this country: this may be on a student, holiday or spousal visa.

You would like to stay here and work? Wonderful. There are, of course, a couple of hoops that you need to jump through.

You need to apply for A Leave To Remain Visa. This will cost you some £350. Please note that you are not allowed to work here yet—so the money will have to come from whatever you have saved recently.

You have leave to remain? Excellent. Now you have to apply for the Permission To Work Visa—this will cost you £450. Please note that you are not allowed to work here yet—so the money will have to come from whatever you have saved recently.

You now have two choices, depending on some arbitrary fucking bollocks thought up by this piece of shit government.

Tier 1 visa: this gives you permission to work without your employer sponsoring you (see below). You will have to keep £800 Maintenance Requirement in your bank account at all times for the three months prior to application. On top of this, you will have to pay an £820 administration fee.

You will need to get enough points to stay. This basically means that you need to have a Masters degree, be under 28, and have earned a substantial amount of money in this country. You can try to prove earnings in another country, but please note that these will be extraordinarily unrealistic.

Please put your submission in carefully. If the Border Agency gives you the wrong information, and even if they admit culpability, they will turn you down and keep your money. Oh, and you will have no right of appeal. At all. None. Even though they gave you the wrong information. This is because they want you to fuck off.

Tier 2 visa: you can get a job, but your leave to remain is attached to the job—if you lose your job, you have to fuck off home. Immediately. With no appeal.

There's no Maintenance Requirement though: all you need to do is to get a job. This is easy, because you are qualified, right? There are just a couple of conditions on your employer.

First, your employer has to become an official sponsor of non-EU immigrants: this will cost them an £800 administration fee, plus massive lawyers fees and time, i.e. more money.

Second, they have to prove that they cannot find an EU citizen who could do the job as well or better. To do this, they have to advertise the job for a minimum of two weeks in government-approved outlets: then they have to prove that, of all the candidates, no one could do the job better than you.

Simples, eh?

What do you mean, "you've failed"? OK, now you could try marrying a British citizen. Let's say that you have been going out with someone rather super for about eight months, and you would like to get married: is simples!

First, fill out the permission to marry form. The government no longer charges you a £295 fee to process this, but you do need to have three months left on your Leave To Remain Visa—or a really good excuse as to why you don't. Please note that you may well be asked to give the whole history of your relationship up to this point—and the plans for the wedding and reception (including reservation receipts, etc.).

You are married—well done! Now you have to fill in your Leave To Remain On Grounds Of Marriage Form. This will cost you £350. The Border Agency will want to see proof that you married because you love each other—please be ready to show them pictures of the reception, and the honeymoon and, basically, the bloodied wedding night sheet. Please note that, if you do not have the money to have an expensive reception or honeymoon, the Border Agency might decide that the whole thing is a scam and throw you out anyway.

You've got the Leave To Remain? Well done. Please note that you cannot work for six months, at least, thus ensuring that your spouse—busy carrying all of the wedding, reception and honeymoon bills—will be fucking destitute for the next six months.

Please note: you are still not allowed to claim any benefits.

If you would like to work after six months, you will need to fill out the Permission To Work Visa. This will cost you—and your spouse—another £450. This is entirely natural—we cannot have you scum coming over here and taking our jobs.

Have you got through all that? Well done: welcome to Britain, land of freedom and tolerance.

IMMIGRANTS will be denied British passports if they are judged unpatriotic under a new citizenship system.

Foreigners would have to earn points to become British citizens in plans to be announced tomorrow by Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

But they will be penalised for what is deemed "unBritish" behaviour.

Home Office sources said that would cover unpatriotic acts like protesting against British troops.

Applicants would also be denied passports if they have a history of anti-social behaviour—even if they have never been convicted.

Please also note that the definition of unpariotic is at the whim of the Home Office, utterly undefined in law, and generally designed to ensure that they can deport you at any time they like—unless you behave.

Please also note that the Tories have utterly failed to comment on any of this, so please don't think that a vote for them will help your situation.

Interesting summary, and quite different from my own experience of being a migrant on a spousal visa. It didn't cost as much, I was granted a permanent residents visa with few conditions and which allowed me to work without buggering around with totting up points. We did have to provide quite a lot of evidence that the relationship is genuine - not quite bloodied wedding sheets, but not far off. But apart from that it was quite different, and the immigration people I dealt with were friendly and clearly knew what they were talking about. Mind you, I was a British citizen wanting to leave the fucking dump, not a foreign national trying to get in. Which brings me to a question: why can't someone who wants to live and work in the UK take my place? I'd rather be set on fire than go to what might loosely be called 'home', so having finished with my UK citizenship it might as well go to someone who actually - inexplicably if you ask me - wants it.

The Australian system is similar, I had to have enough points, wait 2 years, pay 10,000 dollars and even though my daughter is Australian I still cannot qualify for any benefits for another 2 years. You know what though? I don't mind, that I had to go through the process shows commitment to the country, having to wait until I have paid some tax before being allowed to scrounge is just fine by me.

Why should the Uk or anywhere else just let anyone who feels like it turn up and stay? If you do that you will let all manner of lazy scrounging pricks from anywhere that doesn't have such a good benefits system turn up and abuse the country.

The problem is that it is ridiculously two tiered, why should an EU citizen be able to move to the UK so easily but an American have to jump through hoops?

The system should be difficult, time consuming and expensive, that way it ensures only people who actually give a shit or have a contribution to make get let in.

"Why should the Uk or anywhere else just let anyone who feels like it turn up and stay? If you do that you will let all manner of lazy scrounging pricks from anywhere that doesn't have such a good benefits system turn up and abuse the country."

Trouble is, we are doing both. The tortuous system the Devil describes is for those who want to do it legally.

Arrive underneath a coach, disappear into the black erconomy and you're set up.

Marry an EU citizen (doesn't matter from which country in the EU, any will do) who has lived in Britain for a year and you will be granted a 5 year residency permit, with no questions asked. At the end of the 5 years you will be granted indefinite leave to remain here but by that time your host's country (Poland, Latvia, Italy, France, whomever) will have granted you a passport by this time so no need to worry about Life in the UK test or having to demonstrate an aptitude of English.

Best of all, this is absolutely free! Yes, that's right, while British citizens have to jump through hoops, pay all these fees, take these tests and get, at the most, a 2 year visa these visa's grant the same rights, are free and last for 5 years - no questions asked.

I know three people who have done this, they married abroad, came here on tourist visas, applied for this one using form EEA2 (google it) and were granted the 5 year visa from their existing tourist visa. British citizens cannot apply for a new visa if they are here on a student visa. One of the couple doing this have even managed to get the wife's sister over here on the same visa, not even a spouse, this visa is good for family members too.

It doesn't matter how tough the government get on our immigration, with policies like this, governed by EU law, google Surinder Singh case, immigration will not only continue at massive levels but is discriminatory against British citizens in favour of EU!

Sorry for the long post, but when you have to go through the immigration rigmarole (and I fully accept it is necessary) like I have and paid thousands of pounds in the process, then see people whose grandparents were Italian, never been to Italy - or even know where it is on a map - but manage to get an Italian passport then come here with all their family it makes one a little bitter.

And just to top off it (me again, sorry for triple post, if it's possible for site admin to merge them feel free) while on a British sponsored visa it will say 'No recourse to public funds' meaning benefits, tax credits, etc. on the EEA2 visa there is no such stipulation so as soon as you're here it's benefit time.

Fucking hell s/he must be brain damaged, that could cost us a fortune to treat. Make it impossible for him/her to do so.

Simple innit?

Seriously, you two should be thinking about living in the US or anywhere else. Obama v Gordon no contest, moron v lunatic, a moron will occasionally make a right decision based on the law of averages, a lunatic never will.

Mr Devil, you are over reacting and beginning to sound like one of the righteous!

"Immigrants will have to "earn" citizenship. They could even be denied passports if they join unpatriotic activities such as demonstrating against British troops, the government spin machine tells us today.Sounds impressive and tough, no? Except the spin masks certain truths; Call it having to "earn" a passport, they're still being issued in record numbers, and the number of people receiving citizenship is going up and up and up..... Parliamentary questions I've tabled since becoming an MP convince me we've a hopelessly flawed system of immigration controls, open-door visas and student visas, and state officials unwilling to enforce the law. As a consequence, there's no effective control to determine who gets to settle in the UK".

If we had not been flooded with all kinds of immigrants, from bogus Pakistani students to Somali 'asylum seekers', if parts of most of our cities did not look like another country, if immigrant crime rates we not what they are and if our culture was dominant and not being watered down by the PC brigade on behalf of said immigrants, then we just might have taken a more magnanimous attitude to it all.

Parliamentary questions I've tabled since becoming an MP convince me we've a hopelessly flawed system of immigration controls, open-door visas and student visas, and state officials unwilling to enforce the law.

Oh really? Those state officials unwilling to enforce the law were oddly fucking gung-ho about it this morning, when they detained me at Heathrow airport for 45 minutes even though I have a valid visa. Which they freely admitted. Didn't stop them questioning me several times and consulting my entire immigration history on their database.

"Call it having to "earn" a passport, they're still being issued in record numbers, and the number of people receiving citizenship is going up and up and up..."

And yet we still have net emmigration—more people leave this country than come into it (a fact that is conveniently glossed over by people who moan about such things).

"Parliamentary questions I've tabled since becoming an MP convince me we've a hopelessly flawed system of immigration controls, open-door visas and student visas, and state officials unwilling to enforce the law. As a consequence, there's no effective control to determine who gets to settle in the UK."

Yes, we do: that is entirely the point of this series of posts—we fucking screw those who are skilled and who want to work and contribute taxes, and we allow in any old EU cunt because we cannot stop them.

I have proposed a solution: Mr Cameron can have it for free (and it can be implemented whilst we are still negotiating our withdrawal from the EU too).

But your point about there being more emigration is based on official figures, which we know can't be trusted. I don't know if you realise that mass immigration is an idea that was promoted by the Frankfurt School, a bunch of Cultural Marxists, who saw it as a way to bring about revolution by undermining western culture and Christianity.To me this cultural change is what is so alarming and it is likely to cause a backlash, especially when times get harder. You seem to forget that tribalism is hard wired into the human DNA, as we saw recently in Northern Ireland.I hope I'm wrong, but I expect to see increasing numbers of attacks on immigrants, particularly when this financial crisis exposes, as you have pointed out, the un-sustainability of the welfare state. When those cuts begin in earnest and the benefit classes have been starved enough that then no longer have to waddle from their sofas, then you could well see immigrants being turned on.

My wife and I have been trying to relocate from the US for a couple of years now. We have never broken the law, are well-educated, etc. We even had saved up enough money, at one point, to live without work for a year and a half! The reason why we wanted to come to the UK was that all of our closest friends live there and we have no family to speak of still alive. I understand all the hoops one has to jump through, but sometimes it gets overwhelming how much UK hates immigrants from first world countries. I met so many new UK citizenships who claimed refugee status when what they meant was they were running from there past wrongs.It is so disheartening to us, because it seems like every change to the immigration laws encourages people who want to stay apart from English society and are not the most upstanding people and discourages just normal folk from coming in. It is tiring but we continue to follow the rules and will do so. Supposedly, the laws will get tighter, so I see no chance for us or anyone like us.

@ovinecouncil, the Australian system is not at all similar for married to/engaged to/shacked up with an Aussie significant other - see my comments above your own. Compare that with what Devil's Kitchen said about non-EU migrants to the UK marrying British citizens. How much aggro is involved, how much it costs, the conditions, the lack of benefits, the denial of the right to work etc etc, let alone the disgusting requirement to carry biometric ID around at all times.

Great post. When I applied for a Fiance Visa from the UK to the USA 7 years ago (don't ask, I was young and feckless), I also needed to provide my bank statement (showing I had enough cash to live until I got my permission to work), 2 references on my character, a letter from my future Mother in law (who I had planned to live with) stating that I could live with her and would not be paying rent (so no worry about me getting cash in hand), a note from her BANK MANAGER (ffs!), which stated that she owned the house fully and could give me permission and she had enough money to support me if needed, a note from my bank Manager saying that the cash I had was mine and no one elses, a note from my Employer stating that I made the money legally, and I had to hand write an essay (they gave me 2 sheets of A4) stating when, how and why we met. My husband still, after being married to me for 7 years, cannot not claim any discounts or benefits of the council because he is married to an American. We don't need them, but hearing that people from the EU being able to get them pisses me off! I also am treated as a non existent entity by the local council- I called them about 4 years ago to ask to have a mattress picked up. Their answer? "We don't have you on the electoral roll, so as far as were concerned, you don't live there". The best part is the council tax comes out of my bank account with my name! The whole system is ridiculous and shameful and there needs to be reform!!!

You visit the county council offices and ask for one of their individually-numbered two-part "Permit to work in the UK" forms.You fill out your name, sex, date of birth, current residence and passport number.

You take this and your passport to a clerk who checks the details filled in against your passport and that the photo matches.

You hand over a nominal admin fee of £35 and the clerk date-stamps the top copy and retains it to send to HMRC. The clerk then date-stamps the bottom copy and hands it back to you.

You leave and find a employer who will use that unique identifier on the form as your NI Number.